Chapter 1: The Text into the Void
The beep of the fetal heart monitor—now repurposed to track my own exhausted vitals—was the only sound in the sterile, dimly lit hospital room. The rhythmic beep-beep-beep felt like a metronome counting down the absolute isolation I found myself in. Outside the thick glass window, the city was asleep, bathed in the orange glow of streetlamps, oblivious to the trauma my body had just endured.
I held Leo tightly to my chest. He was so small, so impossibly fragile, wrapped tightly in a striped hospital blanket. Every time he shifted, every time he let out a tiny, mewling whimper, my core tightened, causing a blinding, white-hot flash of agony to tear across my lower abdomen.
Twenty-four hours ago, I had been rushed into an emergency C-section. My blood pressure had plummeted, Leo’s heart rate had dropped, and the chaotic blur of surgical lights, shouting doctors, and the cold bite of anesthesia was still playing on a loop in my mind. I had lost blood. A lot of it. I was pale, shivering, and tethered to an IV drip that pushed a cocktail of painkillers and fluids into my bruised veins.
